HealthLawProfBlog is very pleased to welcome the fourth of our bloggers for the month of September, Assistant Professor Kelly Dineen. The following is her short bio:

Kelly Dineen is an Assistant Professor of Health Law and Ethics at Saint Louis University with a joint appointment in School of Law and the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics. She previously served as the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and as the Assistant Director of the Center for Health Law Studies at the School of Law. Prof. Dineen teaches Bioethics and the Law, FDA Law & Policy, and Innovation in Medicine.

Prior to joining Saint Louis University in 2006, Professor Dineen practiced in the health care practice group at Husch & Eppenberger LLC (now Husch Blackwell Sanders, LLP), where she also helped develop the firm's Children with Disabilities Pro Bono Project. She is PhD candidate (anticipated December 2014), holds a J.D. with a certificate in health care law, and a bachelor’s of science in nursing.

Professor Dineen also practiced nursing for a decade prior to entering SLU LAW. She began in a neurosurgical and organ transplant intensive care unit and later worked as a neurosurgical clinical and research nurse at an academic medical center. She has extensive clinical experience with patients with implanted programmable neuromodulation devices and assisted in the development of one of the first centers in the Midwest to provide functional neurosurgery for patients with movement disorders and chronic intractable pain.

Professor Dineen's research interests include the intersection of ethics, law and policy in the treatment of disenfranchised populations (including people with chronic pain or cognitive and neuropsychiatric conditions); end of life care; conflicts of interest in medicine, especially involving medical devices; health care provider decision making and moral development; and clinical research ethics.